We Are Unique When We Cry

A Review of Michael Trimble, Why humans like to cry: Tragedy, evolution, and the brain. Crying is an important human behavior, and we are all aware of the impact that our tears can have on others, and theirs on us. From an ethological perspective, the survival value of crying is clear, particularly in the case of infants and small children. However, much less is known about the evolutionary meaning of crying, in particular its relationship with other abilities developed over millions of years such as Theory of Mind, empathy, consciousness, morality, altruism, and love. These relationships are explored in a new book by Michael Trimble: Why humans like to cry: Tragedy, evolution and the brain. Trimble is a neuroscientist with a passion for music and Greek Tragedy. In this insightful book he connects these disparate areas by adopting an evolutionary perspective. His major aims are to understand how crying emotionally has evolved over the past several million years, why it is a uniquely human attribute, and why, paradoxically, it is often a pleasurable experience for us–for example, when listening to the Molto Adagio from Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 132 or witnessing Shakespeare's Othello on stage. What most fascinated us in this book was the broad perspective the author takes to understand why we cry when we experience intense emotions. On the one hand, Trimble shows us that the association of tears and art has a long past by taking us back to the origins of tragedy in Greek drama and the dichotomy between the Dionysian and Apollonian–the aesthetics of crying. On the other, Trimble analyzes this behavior from the more recent perspective of neuroscience and evolution to understand its mechanism and function. He explores the neurobiology and neuroanatomy of tears, including their chemical composition and description of the relevant brain structures and neural circuits. The evolutionary approach suggests the importance of the tears as a way to communicate with others, and that it is easier for us to express emotions and feelings by crying rather than words because crying